In march of 2021, when I reshot the last of the diaries, I also found a thin notebook where I wrote a diary during the summer vacation of 1965. Must have been homework, which I took seriously. Now whether I liked the ideas that whatever happens with me may be of some importance and worth writing about, or I liked the idea that I write something as if I was someone, who can know. It's only 14 pages long, with my then large handwriting. This is between third and fourth grade.
For today, only this:
The first day of holiday passed without special events, except that in the movie I saw the film "People from the planet of secrets". The film was so scary, that I thought about it almost until midnight.
Some thinking. I remember this. There was some ćevapčići for dinner, and I got greedy with onions (for a long time, at least two decades after this, chopped onions were the only salad which went with barbecue), so I had the ideal combination: salty, spicy and probably fatigue. I couldn't sleep at all, and when I finally did, I kept having nightmares about that big robot destroying everything in its way with those rays (then I didn't know about science fictional slow light, which takes 1,2 seconds to cross the scene, regardless of its scope, be it a room, hangar, field or city).
That's when I swore I won't watch horror and that I'll learn how to tell myself in my sleep that this is just a dream. I managed both, over the years.
The next day the whole gang commented on the movie, mostly "wow have you seen what it did, how big it was", "and how it turns thumbs around its hands and drills through the soil with that". Then someone said it was just movie tricks, he's seen that robot, it's not larger than one pedalj, someone had one, some gastarbajter uncle brought it from Sweden. They only make it look big in the movie but it's really this small.
The movie is, BTW, "Mysterians" by Ishiro Honda, from 1957. It arrived as a toy to Sweden faster than as a movie to us, I guess it was finally cheap enough and ideologically neutral, while american SF from the fifties was mostly imperialistic.
After this we also had Godzilla and others on the subject, which I mostly avoided. Once you see through a movie trick, the magic is gone, including the dark one.
On twentythird of june I have "taken from the library (on šećerana) the book 'Secret of two oceans'. The bicycle was malfunctioning and I took it to be fixed." "Took" sounds like "carried" in serbian, I guess I just pushed it, but don't remember where to.
Now [2024] that I think of it, that must have been that blacksmith further up the street, some three corners away. The malfunction was in the screw in the front brake handle, which doubled as its axle. That front brake was neither here nor there - it braked by pressing the tyre with a rubber pad from above, which was usually pushed by some lever, but this one didn't have a lever but rather a wire in a sheath, the kind that sportsy bicycles had, where they actually had two pads pushing against the sides of the wheel rim.
The guy welcomed me and told me to wait, the iron is forged while it's hot. And if I don't want to wait too long, I may help him finish the current piece faster, to blow the bellows. The bellows was huge, about one [meter] by two, with two plank plates and folding leather between them. The lower plate was horizontal and fixed, the upper was hinged on the near end and the far end would be lifted by a length of string, passed to a pulley hung from a ceiling beam. I only needed to pull it down to raise the plate by about one meter, and then it goes down by its own weight. The air exited via a tunnel under his fire, in which he burned, this I remember, coke, same as used by kombinat's heating/power plant. That was interesting to watch, and I remember the scene quite well, and my job wasn't particularly hard - I pulled the string some seven-eight times and he was done. Then he found some screw, two sizes larger than needed, which he screwed in, widening the hole a bit, and thus my bike was fixed. I had a brake.
About 25th it says "Yesterday Zvojko visited me. We played and read. Today I was at school and brought the booklet and commendation for excellent success. Glad, upon coming home, I treated myself with a whole chocolate. Dad was in Zemun and brought me a wrist watch of 'Start' brand."
Ah, the times when I was glad about good marks (and "success" doesn't imply any excellence at school, it can be sufficient, good, very good etc - see school levels). And this means this is when dad took to studying. Part time, when he gets the time, so it took him almost nine years.
And the watch endured a lot. See 16-VI-1966..
13-III-2021 - 6-II-2026